The Case for Justice Innovation

At the end of September 2010 I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak to the Portuguese Secretary of State for Justice and his colleagues from prisons, probation, the police, the Bar and the judiciary in Lisbon, Portugal. The event was

“Human rights with no money” – still time to avert a catastrophe

In a way, I’ve been very lucky. I cut my teeth in the world of human rights and prison reform mostly in the naughties (having started in ‘99), which globally I think was a golden decade for prison reform. Not because suddenly all the hawks became doves or there weren’t people being tortured or dying from

Justice Perestroika: managing prisons in a time of crisis

That sounds more like the title of a book or a social movement, but I just wanted to commit to writing a few thoughts about the possible scenarios facing us in the “developed” world in the coming months and years. Perhaps someday sooner rather than later I could gather some of these ideas in something a little more solid than an online repository, but until then I shall document these thoughts here.

Many of you will of course recognise that title as a reference to

Sector vs Setting: A Helpful Distinction?

You may have noticed that there is often confusion in describing where one is working, be it engaging in reform, or in innovation or both. The current funding climate is in part to blame – third sector organisations, consultancies and even delivery agencies often tailor their descriptions of where and with whom they intend to work to the definitions and criteria of funding bodies.

Reform = Innovation?

Perhaps appropriately, innovation as a subject which is formally discussed in policy circles is in itself relatively new. Reform however has been around for centuries and millennia, and even in its contemporary guise, penal and security sector reform has been around for a few hundred years and has a strong history with its own legendary champions like Peter the Great, Jeremy Bentham and Nelson Mandela. There is a relationship between the two, but what is it, and at which point do they intersect?